Little Monsters
by Lucillia
Summary: An alternate Sarek meets Amanda story. Sarek - not knowing what he's getting himself into - decides to teach at a Pre-school attached to the Elementary School Amanda teaches at. Amanda helps him deal with the little monsters he has to teach.
1. Chapter 1

Sarek felt a small sense of satisfaction as he placed the last datapad containing the day's lessons in front of the last diminutive chair. Taking a final look around the brightly colored room to make sure everything was in order, he seated himself at his desk to await the immanent arrival of his young pupils.

While following in his forefather Solkar's footsteps had been a dream of his since childhood, he had also contemplated following another career path as well. As a result, he had taken and completed the the courses to earn the necessary credentials to become a child instructor as well as the studies necessary for a future ambassador during his secondary and post-secondary education. Ambassador Selden had known of his other desire and had offered to give him a year away from his duties in order to pursue this "alternate career path" to ensure that he would be satisfied with his career in the diplomatic services, and that he could serve with no doubts or concerns about what could have been had he followed a different path.

After taking an accelerated home course in child psychology that was a requirement for all child educators who practiced on Earth, Sarek submitted his credentials to various places of learning and was accepted to teach at the pre-school that was attached to the Zephram Cochrane Elementary in Seattle during the 2226-2227 school year. The fact that he had never directly interacted with a human child - much less a group of them - had never been discussed. The school naturally assumed that anyone applying to be a teacher would have spent a great deal of time around children, and Sarek assumed that all his lessons had left him equipped to deal with any situation that might come up.

By the end of his first day of teaching, he realized that he'd made a huge mistake and that his job in the Ambassador's office had indeed been the right one for him. Unfortunately, he had signed a contract that he would be unable to get out of until the end of the year. In a few short hours, all of his illusions about human children had been shattered in the first hour. Human adults were considered rather childlike by Vulcan standards, and he had expected ther children to be just a bit more so, or possibly like some of the more intelligent and trainable animals considering that the course in child psychology he had taken that had dealt mainly with learning and language aquisition made it seem nearly so. He was wrong however...

Human children were little monsters.

**Edited 1-19-13**


	2. Meeting Her

It had been on his second day on the job that he had met Her...

Shortly after the disaster that had been the result of encouraging the children to discover any artistic talents they possessed, a situation he hadn't known quite how to deal with arose. He had been washing the paint off of the hands of the fifth student while he tried to ignore the multicolored mess he would have to clean from the tables, chairs, and walls later when one of the smallest females grabbed a leg of his pants and yanked.

"I went potty." the small girl whose red hair was up in pigtails said.

Looking down, it was exceedingly obvious that the girl had "gone potty" as the human colloquialism went. The odor of urine wafted up from the wet spot that ran down both legs of her pants, further underlining what a crisis this was as the room was undoubtedly contaminated by her bodily fluids. He had been assured that all of the children he was to be educating were toilet trained, but this was apparently not the case, and he was uncertain as to how to deal with the situation.

Aside from the entire sanitation issue for which humans may have different standards and solutions as they often did, there was the question of how to deal with the child's befouled attire. As far as he knew, there were no spare clothes on hand, and he was uncertain as to what the rules about undressing a child of the opposite gender were in the first place, as humans held diverse positions on such things. Some held deep cultural taboos on such things, and some viewed it as a non-issue. On Vulcan, he would never have encountered such a situation as children weren't sent out to be educated until it was one hundred percent certain that they had been toilet trained.

His new aide who had been absent the day before due to a family emergency smirked at him as he stood in front of the small redheaded child practically dithering about what course to take. So far, the man hadn't provided much assistance other than to provide more paint for the children to use in their attempts at defacing the classroom, and from the looks of things, there wouldn't be any help coming from his direction in this situation either.

"I'll watch the class while you take care of that." the man whose name was Paul said, gesturing to the child.

In the end, he ended up wrapping the urine soaked child in plastic and carrying it to the office so he could either learn the policy for dealing with this sort of situation or request assistance from one of the females working there or both. She had been there supervising a young man who had disrupted her class and had escaped the last several attempts at being sent to the principal's office.

"I'm going to make sure you stay there until the Principal comes to get you." She had said as he entered with his burden.

Her blue eyes had flashed with amusement the instant she caught sight of him, which had been about two seconds after she had caught the scent of urine that had wafted up from the small girl he carried despite the plastic.

"You must be the new pre-school teacher I heard so much about." She said.

"I am." he replied.

"There's some spare clothes for those kinds of situations in a cabinet in the staff room." She said, gesturing to the child he carried.

"What is the proper procedure for handling this sort of situation?" he asked Her since she was apparently familiar with such matters.

"You check out the clothes that you need, and send the kid into the bathroom to get dressed. When their parents come pick her up, you ask that they bring the clothes back as soon as possible." She said. "With a kid that small though, you might need to help her unbutton her pants."

"Thank you." he said as he turned to leave with the child.

"Amanda. My name is Amanda. I teach one of the Third grade classes. If you need anything and I have a bit of spare time, I'd be willing to help."

**Edited 1-19-13**


	3. Help from Her

After he'd gotten his young charge sorted out, he returned to the classroom which was in even worse disarray than it had been when he'd left. The children who had been given an unscheduled session of unstructured play time by his assistant added to that mess. The urine appeared to have been cleaned up as the main puddle that the child had left was gone, but he could still smell it from where his student had tracked it on her way over to him in order to alert him to the issue.

Suppressing his displeasure over the fact that his assistant had allowed the children to play in such unsanitary conditions, he decided to clean up the parts of the mess that his assistant who was reading a story book about a "Stinky Cheese Man" to several students had neglected to deal with. Gathering cleaning supplies from a locked cabinet next to the small sink that had been installed in the room, including something that had apparently been formulated for removing urine, he set about to finding the extent of the mess.

Less than ten minutes later, he was in the principal's office being informed that the Emergency Biohazard Decontamination Sprinklers had not been installed for the purpose for which he'd used them.

An hour following the misunderstanding and the ensuing lecture on the proper cleaning procedure for such situations, the school day had finally ended, all of the children who'd regarded the incident as an adventure had been shipped off to their respective homes, and his assistant Paul had mysteriously vanished leaving him with the chaotic mess that had been a classroom at one point. Toys, papers, picture books, and datapads which reeked of the cleaning agent which had dried on them were strewn across every available surface, including the floor, and there was paint everywhere in bright colors and murky mixtures. This would take hours to clean, and he had no clue as to where he should start.

Such things never happened on Vulcan.

She came in while he was picking up a pile of wooden blocks which were a sort of traditional Earth toy and putting them back in their box.

"Paul ditched you then?" She said. "He did that to the last teacher. If he wasn't the principal's brother, he'd have been fired."

He raised an eyebrow as She walked over to the sink and picked up a sponge.

"I figured I may as well help you since I don't really have anything else to do at the moment." She said as she went over to one of the walls and started scrubbing off a blue hand-print.

"Thank You." he said as he placed the box of blocks back where it belonged.

"You're welcome." She replied.

With Her assistance, the room was cleaned far more quickly than it would have been had he been left to deal with it on his own. After the room was clean, they went to the teacher's lounge for tea and coffee while She graded her students' work. During the conversation they had, he learned that She was studying the most common dialect of the main Vulcan language and he offered to help her with her pronunciation. She was grateful.

**Edited 1-19-13**


	4. Advice From Mother

After returning home following his discussion with Amanda, Sarek called his mother. His mother had been displeased to learn that he had neglected to inform her of his sabbatical from the Ambassador's office when he'd called her asking for advice about dealing with small human children. Following a disaster that had destroyed a colony ship and killed nearly 300 individuals that had taken place before he was born, his mother who had been amongst the crew of the science vessel that had been the first to respond to the distress signals had briefly fostered a number of the surviving children.

Considering the fact that he remembered several of those children visiting as adults, he was reasonably certain that that fostering had been reasonably successful.

His mother's advice had mostly dealt with the most effective ways of disciplining children when they misbehaved and rewarding them in order to encourage good behavior. Several of the methods had been outlined in the psychology course he'd taken, but a number of them had not.

A couple of the methods his mother had outlined were impractical however as school policy forbade giving children food outside of the scheduled mealtimes. Paul had mentioned something about a snacktime that was supposed to come before the naptime that had been suggested when he'd been submitted his lesson plan, but there was nothing in the school schedule that released the pre-school students around the time the other students headed into the cafeteria for lunch.

Amanda had provided a number of suggestions, but most of them were impractical for an entirely different set of reasons. Vulcans were touch telepaths, and as a result, being touched was generally considered to be an intimate act that was reserved for family. And, even then, family members often kept their distance unless it was a special occasion. He had only carried the small child that day due to the urgency of the situation. Giving the children gestures of encouragement such as patting them on the head or the back was most definitely out of the question.

Deciding to implement one of the discipline suggestions that his mother made which hadn't been included in the course he'd taken, he set to revising his lesson plans with an eye towards providing activities for the students to engage in that would not leave the room in quite the mess it had been in that day. Paul's decidedly unhelpful nature would of course be a factor in his estimates on the timing of certain lessons and tasks as he could not be counted upon to maintain discipline, and the frequent interruptions of undisciplined students would cause the task of completing a lesson to take longer.

The next morning, when he arrived at the school, he went to Amanda to get her opinion on his revised lesson plan as she was experienced with teaching young children, having done it for years. Based on the look of incredulity on her face, his decision to attempt more Vulcan methods of teaching the students rather than following the traditional human method would not be an advisable move.


End file.
